Re: globals (_locals)

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> So how do things work at the global scope?  Unless there is some good reason
> to make the global keyword required there, it would be nice not to.

I am not sure whether this is a good reason, but currently in Lua the
"global scope" has exactly the same semantics of any other function. You
can always enclose any chunk between "function ()" - "end" and everything
works fine.

If we assume that a global declaration works as a switch to turn on
declaration mode, and that global declarations respect scopes,
then the following could work:

  a = 3;  -- OK, default is declaration mode (dmode) off

  function f()    -- OK
    global b        -- turns on dmode (only inside f)
    b = 1
    c = 1       -- ERROR; c is undeclared
  end

  x = 4;      -- OK; out of scope of "global b", so back to dmode off

On the other hand, if the chunk starts with "global", then everything
in it will inherit the dmode on.

-- Roberto